November 20, 2008

Hello and welcome back (a 1 2, a 1 2) to The Mix Machine.
Turning this week over to DAVO who shares with us...

Back in the day, when we were all babies, we were FRESH!!!!!! With no years of laurel to fall back on, we still had something to prove - we were hungry and always crying for food...

This slice of the DJ Red Alert pie is from a time early in his radio career on NYC's KISS-FM when he was growing and pulsating in ways that....WHOAA!!!!! Muthafukka could play the shit out of a record - no, really - PLAY THE SHIT OUT OF A RECORD like no one else on the NY airwaves - all to rokk the greater metro block party. If you smirk at the "pulsating" analogy, wait till Kool Keith's spit starts spinning around your ears like..... well - I'd better stop now...

November 13, 2008

Hello and welcome back (a 1 2, a 1 2) to The Mix Machine.
Turning this week over to Drew Dobbs who shares with us...

In the late '80's through the mid-'90's I managed a copy shop in Noe Valley in San Francisco, and one of my many unusual and talented customers was Mr. David Paul for whom I printed his 'zine The BOMB Hip-Hop Magazine (until he went to offset) and did color copies and faxes and so on. Later when he began to put out his delightful Return Of The DJ album series I managed to score a spot as a 'secret/hidden track' on the CD version second volume of that series - look for it!

A nicer fellow you could hardly meet, and he's still very much in business. Once in early 1997 he gave me a mixtape sent to him by a German DJ friend and I've enjoyed it (mostly as a' work tape' at jobs) ever since.

Presented here for your breakdancing and partying enjoyment is the entire ELECTRO cassette by DJ DOUBLE D, 92 minutes of sequencer/sampler/909-saturated tunes spanning 1978 to 1994. Double D (not the same one who worked with Steinski) has been hosting the Funky Fresh Radio Show on Radio X Frankfurt, since 1997, and is still turning those steel wheels very busily around Europe from his home base in Offenbach.

November 06, 2008

Here are five Rodium swap meet mix tapes mixed by Dr. Dre. This is the last offering of Rodium Swap Meet Mix Tapes that I have to share. Any others out there with titles not featured leave a comment and we'll see about getting them up to share with others.

When hiphop was being birthed at some parties in BoogieDown or DoOrDie, or the Bridge, or Moneymakin' (gotta make sure to be reppin' the most expansive birth canal known outside ancient Sumara, etc)... before the "crabscratch" was named, before the street DJ's and MC's went PRO... FunkyFreshRadio usually meant listening left of the dial in NYC- FMU/KCR/USB/PKN/ETC- and the megablasts of BLS/RKS/KTU. LOT'S of choices (Believe me, cuz I live in Portland, Oregon now)...

My favorite was WHBI 105.9 from Jersey. In addition to the Awesome Twosome and Afrika Islaam, there was the weekly dose of The World Famous Supreme Team, made famous (WORLDWIDE) by Malcolm McLaren on his mega-hit Buffalo Gals. They were anything but slick, yet in all their glory totally rocked the latenites of post-girlfriend misery and pre-girlfriend elation that marked that year for me.

Please enjoy this recording. 46 minutes of their "anniversary" show from 1982. 46 minutes of lofi Placenta from the hiphop birthcanal, recorded on my rescued from the trash Panasonic boombox using Realistic Supertape.

September 04, 2008

This is the first week in a series entitled, "The Mix Machine". In the future weeks to come (every Thursday) I'll be sharing classic mix tapes, limited edition 12" megamix singles/albums + current mashups and massive mix meltdowns.

From 1985-1988, while living in San Diego, I used to hit the Kobey's Swap Meet at the Sports Arena downtown. This is one of many mix tapes I'll be sharing that I used to pick up for $5 a pop. They are known as Rodium Swap Meet Mix Tapes. I can recall hundreds of tapes to wade through, and it's no fishing story - it was an avalanche of cassettes to satisfy my boombox. Mixes by Dr. Dre, Tony A., Battery Brain, DJ Jam, Unknown DJ... and the list goes on. I never did make it to the Rodium swap meet in L.A. - but there were more then enough in San Diego to dig through and I'm guessing that the tapes after being dubbed (whereever the DJ's origin was) were sent out to a number of flea markets on the west coast where they would sell like mad.

MP3s encoded at 320k from cassette with no processing.

If 1980s electro/old school hip hop, freestyle and miami bass sounds make you duck for cover, jump past these posts - cause we'll be featuring a ton of the material weekly!

If you have an old mix tape to share, drop me a line, and we'll see about getting it up to share with others.

August 02, 2007

Well, hello everyone. It's my first post here and boy howdy it's a good one. First post as Listener Fodder that is. Every day this year you can catch the 365 Days Project that I am involved with (as the coordination guy) with many others sharing audio delights (or in some cases audio travesties).

In the mid-1980s I first had my taste of what is now termed "Space-Age Bachelor Pad Music" and a dozen different variations of genre defining terms to describe 'this' music. It was the music of my grandparents in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I remember visiting family and being subjected (at the time) to Lawrence Welk. If someone would have told me at age 12 in 1981 that I would be fixed to the tube less then a decade later watching re-runs of pink champagne bubbles and safe/sanitized sounds I would have thought they were nuts. I was young and a kid, whaddya expect. The new ELO and Bowie albums were much more important to a kid who was born in 1969. Well, to this kid. And in 1979 I wish I could say I was ultra-cool and had the Industrial Records catalog in my knapsack next to picking up Roger Roger, Les Baxter, Esquivel records at 2nd hand stores, but I had not yet experienced the music that would shape a defining role in my future musical listening.

I was living in Berkeley, California, in the late 1980s when I first heard of Bob Thompson. I found a copy of "Mmm, Nice!" at Rasputin's records on telegraph. Must have been 1987 or 1988 and I vividly remember the 50 cent, 25 cent, and 10 cent record boxes. I don't recall any dollar boxes on the floor, those prices were reserved for the shelf stock. Of course prices went higher, but for a record by Bob Thompson I probably paid a quarter. Suckers! Okay, well you can still find Bob's records in thrift stores and rather cheap at 2nd hand shops, but that's not because it sucks... it's because of the amount pressed of his first album, the one I was lucky to find. After a moving around quite a bit over the years my records have gone up and down in size, and I still consistently purge. But "Mmm, Nice!" is still with me. It's one of about 50 records I have had 20+ years. The title song "Mmm, Nice!" has been a staple in my dj crate. Listen to the song here.